His Voice as the Sound

Joseph Swain (1761–1796) was orphaned young in Birmingham, England, and apprenticed to an engraver. Lively and reckless in his youth, he was stopped short by a sermon in which he recognized himself, and was baptized in 1783 by the London Baptist leader John Rippon. He said he felt 'the presence of God in his soul' — and the engraver became a poet.

By thirty he was the pastor at Walworth, south London, beloved for a ministry that one hymnologist called 'short but popular and very useful.' Short is right: Swain died in April 1796, just 35 years old. But in his few years he published a remarkable body of devotional verse, including a long poem cycle on redemption.

This hymn comes from Swain's nine-stanza poem 'A Description of Christ,' best known by its opening line, 'O thou in whose presence my soul takes delight.' The Latter-day Saint hymn begins at its fourth stanza: 'His voice as the sound of the dulcimer sweet.' The imagery is drawn straight from the Song of Solomon — the Beloved on the mountains, the gardens and cedars, Sharon's roses — scripture's love poetry turned into a portrait of the Savior: His voice, His smile, His beauty.

Here's the delightful Latter-day Saint connection: this same Swain poem was adapted by W. W. Phelps into 'Redeemer of Israel,' one of the Restoration's founding hymns. Swain never heard of the restored Church — he died nine years before Joseph Smith was born — but his lines have been singing in it from the beginning.

The melody, SAMANTHRA, is an anonymous American folk tune first printed in Ananias Davisson's A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (1820) and spread through the shape-note songbooks of the South. Minor-keyed and plaintive, it gives Swain's love poetry a wilderness ache that English tunes never did.

Mack Wilberg's arrangement made the pairing famous among Latter-day Saints — the Tabernacle Choir sang it in the October 2018 general conference — and on June 12, 2025, the hymn entered the hymnbook itself as #1040, new to any official LDS collection.